Automatic Data Collection Tools

CISCO’S USE OF AUTOMATIC DATA COLLECTION TOOLS:

Cookies
A cookie cannot read personal data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Indeed, the only Personal Information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. Accepting the cookies used on our website may give us access to information about your browsing behavior, which we may use to personalize your experience and track user traffic patterns, and to merge this information when you register. We do this in order to determine the usefulness of our website information to our users and to see how effective our navigational structure is in helping users reach that information. You may browse most of our websites without accepting cookies from Cisco; however, some website functionality may be lost by disabling cookies on your computer. Other Cisco web pages, particularly those which require a login and password, require cookies and cannot be used when you have disabled cookies in your browser.

If you prefer not to receive cookies while browsing our websites or via HTML-formatted emails, you can set your browser to warn you before it accepts cookies or refuse the cookie when your browser alerts you to its presence. You can also refuse all cookies by turning them off in your browser. You can find information on popular browsers and how to adjust your cookie preferences at the following websites:

The Adobe Flash Player (“Flash”) is a web tool that uses technology to remember settings, preferences and usage (such as volume level) similar to browser cookies but these are managed through a different interface than the one provided by your web browser. Cisco may employ Flash cookies in certain situations where we use Flash to provide special content such as video clips or animation. You can access your Flash management tools from Adobe’s website directly.

Online Advertising
Certain companies may help us deliver interactive on-line advertising such as banner ads. These companies may collect and use information about customers to help us better understand the offers, promotions, and types of advertising that are most appealing to our customers. After it is collected the information is aggregated so it is not identifiable to a specific individual. The third-party advertisement serving companies currently include, but are not limited to: Google and Collective. These companies may be members of the Network Advertising Initiative, which offers a single location to opt-out of ad targeting. You may find more information by clicking on the company names above and following the links to the websites of each company.

Embedded Web links
Emails from Cisco often use links designed to lead you to a relevant area on the Web, after redirection through Cisco’s servers. The redirection system allows Cisco to change the destination URL of these links, if necessary, and to determine the effectiveness of our marketing initiatives. In emails, these web links may also allow Cisco to determine whether you have clicked a link in an email, and this information about the interaction may be connected to your cisco.com profile. If you do not want Cisco to collect this information, do not click links in an email that Cisco sends.

Web Beacons
In addition, Cisco uses web beacons in conjunction with cookies to understand user behavior. Web beacons are simply a convenient way of gathering basic statistics and managing cookies, and do not give away any extra information from your computer. Turning off your browser’s cookies will prevent web beacons from tracking your specific activity.